A man keeps sliding through my door. Dressed in blue hospital scrubs, he wears a hostly smile and a beard sprinkled with grey to denote experience. The leaflet he is on asks a question: “Tired of waiting?” It also has an answer: “Private treatment made easy”.
I’ve never had a surgeon flop on to my doormat before. Discounts for a Domino’s, yes. Ebulliently misspelt flyers about guttering, naturally. But this is the first time private hospitals have asked over and over if sir fancies a scalpel somewhere intimate. And opening the leaflet from Circle, I find promises galore. “Eliminate the wait,” urges the UK’s largest private hospital group, while “treatment is more affordable than you think” is above a price list: knee replacements start at £13,250, a hysterectomy goes for nearly £9,000, and snipping out your child’s tonsils costs “from £3,276”.
